Publication of the Economic Consequences made Keynes an internationally famous figure. Its analysis was embraced by the liberal left in Britain, scorned by the nationalist right in France, more ambiguously received in the United States. But his fame was now undeniable – and immediately recognised by the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova with whom Keynes now began an affair that was to lead to their marriage. In particular this chapter uses Lydia’s letters as a lens through which we can see the impact of Keynes’s crucial venture into journalism. For he was now commissioned by the Manchester Guardian, Britain’s most eminent liberal newspaper, in a double role. Thus he covered the international Genoa conference for the paper in 1922, giving him insight on Lloyd George’s new role as a ‘revisionist’ intent on conciliating Europe. And Keynes also edited a series of special supplements for the paper that sought to propagate a more wide-ranging analysis of the problems facing reconstruction in Europe. The fact that these were now written in a more accessible form, with Lydia’s encouragement, was thus a crucial step for Keynes in propagating his ideas for a wider readership.

The Sultanate's political economy evolved continuously. Since the regime presided over an imperial union of territories that differed in their topography and ecology, the process of evolution in these regions exhibited contrasting patterns of change. Agriculture in the Nile Valley manifested procedures unlike crop raising or animal husbandry along the Syrian coast, upland valleys or semi-arid outback of the Syrian Sahel. Commodities imported from South or East Asia transited from ports in Yemen or Western Arabia through entrepôts on the Upper Nile to Alexandria, where they were transferred to European carriers that conveyed them to destinations on the Mediterranean north shore and beyond. Agents in each of these stages answered to differing sponsors, aligned their conduct of business with local politics and extracted revenues at levels fluctuating within the mechanisms that governed inter-regional trade throughout this period. Domestic commerce in both urban and rural settings dealt in the exchange of commodities produced locally in a workshop milieu. Control over (and profiteering from) marketing of lucrative staples that funneled revenues to the regime, such as spices, textiles or sugar, became a principal objective of governmental authority, with results that enhanced the Sultanate’s fisc in the short term but compromised its competitive position in the longue durée. These issues are considered from the perspective of agriculture or animal husbandry in Egypt and Syria, the varying extent of control exercised over them by the bureaucracy, interregional trade and its manipulation by the Sultanate over time, the domestic commercial economy, and finally the overt expropriation or clandestine extraction on which the regime relied as licit sources of revenuediminished in the Sultanate’s final century.

The Sultanate was a global state that interacted with regimes in North, West and East Africa, Mediterranean Europe, Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia. Its ideology of diplomacy focused on maintenance of the balance of power extant during the formative stage of its founding: control over the Syrian Littoral and Red Sea nautical routes to South and East Asia. Senior officers appointed from Cairo ruled Syrian provincial capitals as viceroys, tying them directly to the imperial center. On the Red Sea coast of Arabia (Hijaz), the Hasanid Sharifs of Mecca exercised local political authority, but from Baybars’ reign were compelled to comply with the Sultanate’s commercial and fiduciary policies over the spice trade. Tensions in Southeastern Asia Minor heightened when objectives of territorial stasis advocated by the Mamluks clashed with aims of territorial conquest asserted by the Ottomans. Regional principalities pursued their own goals of autonomy with varying degrees of success. The international system of commerce, centered on Venetian and Mamluk exploitation of trade routes to Asia through the Red Sea, was decisively altered by the Portuguese entry to the Indian Ocean. When the Ottomans defeated the Cairo Sultanate, its centrality in the global environment was already diminished.

The Venetians had a substantial stake in the local trade of the Byzantine empire and provided essential naval assistance. The chrysobull of 992 was a confirmation of existing privileges and practices. The same was true of the chrysobull traditionally dated to 1082, which Alexius I Komnenos granted to the Venetians. His son and successor John II refused to ratify the chrysobull while Manuel I Komnenos also sought to bring the Venetians to heel and adopted a bolder strategy. He challenged their control of the Adriatic and in 1171 interned Venetians resident in the empire and seized their property. The Venetians survived only because they had the Adriatic to fall back on. Venice derived its basic strengths from the resources of the northern Adriatic, which allowed them to equip formidable fleets which, in turn, helped them to dominate the Adriatic and to further their interests in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. Despite the frictions, the Venetian patriciate understood that their interests were best served by effective Byzantine government, which guaranteed the security of the seas.

This chapter takes a transnational approach to the study of the administration of quarantine, considering the how boards of health had to operate along local, national, and international registers. Through a social and institutional study of quarantine administration, it becomes clear how boards in different countries negotiated problems in symmetry. The chapter explores the administrative logic underlying disinfection practices and the daily scope of board of health activities. Lazarettos comprised a rigid hierarchy of employees, from the “Captain/Prior” in charge of the building through doctors to the “guardians” who attended each traveling party and who cycled in and out of quarantine themselves. At the top of the hierarchy, boards of health wielded immense power as they acted as local administrators with an international remit. I investigate how the lazaretto could simultaneously serve as an economic engine for cities such as Marseille, a civic institution, and a space that fell within the interstices of administration, whose jurisdictional status remained murky.